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This book represents the first comprehensive study of the evolution of parties and party systems in all nine democratic European states with less than one million inhabitants.As small political units have for long been considered to be most conducive to stable democracy, this volume analyses the actual role of political parties and partisan competition in the operation of modern democracy in those European microstates. Drawing on the crucial contribution of leading country experts in the field, it provides rich, systematic contextualized knowledge on these lesser-known cases. It further contributes to the mainstreaming of small state research in social science studies by comparing the experience of party politics in European microstates with that of larger countries in the same region of the world.This volume will be of key interest to scholars and students of party systems and political parties, elections and democracy, small states, European politics and more broadly of comparative politics.

This book examines the construction of the EU's political identity (or identities), variations in its strength, and the nature of its content. Drawing on studies both on European nation-state formation and on the EU's identity, the chapters take a top-down approach and analyse how EU institutions in different major policy domains have themselves sought to create political identity through policy making. The authors define the construction of EU political identity and set out empirically applicable indicators to assess political identity in policy making. They analyse the construction of identity through a process-oriented approach that explicitly includes contestation and the existence of rival political identities. Comparing across policy domains, the contributions suggest that the ability of EU institutions to construct an EU political identity has been limited not only by existing national identities but also by the coexistence of rival EU political identities within policy domains. Hence, it has been difficult for EU institutions to establish a strong identity, with identity being strongest where there are clear external alternatives and limited rival identities within the EU.

This edited volume affords conceptual and analytical convergence in the study of political incivility by bringing together theoretical and empirical work of scholars from various (sub)disciplines studying political incivility within European countries and the USA. It addresses the needs and challenges of comparative research, adding to a more generic theory on political incivility. Recent years have witnessed growing attention to issues of political incivility in the parliamentary, electoral and media arenas, with rudeness, hostility and vulgarity being highly prevalent in interactions between politicians, journalists and citizens. This book analyses what constitutes this political incivility, its occurrence, causes and effects in these various arenas, using several country-specific contexts, and presenting a cohesive edifice of knowledge on political incivility. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of parliamentary studies, political behaviour, political communication and political psychology, as well as more broadly to political science, communication science, media studies, psychology, sociology and to (non-) governmental institutions and those that are concerned about the quality of democracy or public debate.

Die Beiträge des Bandes beleuchten Narrative und ihren Visualisierungen am Beispiel von top-down kommunizierten politischen Narrativen, zivilgesellschaftliche Gegen-Narrativen sowie visualisierten Narrativen im Bereich Kunst und Literatur. Wie setzen soziale Bewegungen Symbole und Narrativelemente ein, um die Deutungshoheit von Elitendiskursen zu hinterfragen? Inwiefern unterscheiden sich die Narrations- und Visualisierungsstrategien in Asien von jenen in Europa und den USA?

This timely book addresses the increasingly widespread issue of online political hatred in Europe. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it examines both the contributions of new technologies, in particular social networks, to the rise of this phenomenon, and the legal and political contexts in which it is taking place. Through an analysis of online hate speech and its impacts, Giovanni Ziccardi characterizes contemporary political hatred in Europe, highlighting its victims, communication strategies, and the creation of a cross-national network of extremists enabled by technology. He compares legal and political responses to the problem at both national and EU levels, as well as the approach taken by the US, in order to examine the effectiveness of current measures. Finally, he evaluates possible remedies for the situation, including both legal and technological solutions, and outlines the potential for a unified European framework to counter the spread of hatred online. Online Political Hate Speech in Europe will be an essential read for scholars and students in law and politics looking for an in-depth analysis of this issue. It will also be useful for politicians, policy makers, and practitioners seeking to understand the mechanisms underlying the circulation of political hatred.

Bringing the Nation Back In takes as its starting point a series of developments that shaped politics in the United States and Europe over the past thirty years: the end of the Cold War, the rise of financial and economic globalization, the creation of the European Union, and the development of the postnational. This book contends we are now witnessing a break with the post-1945 world order and with modern politics. Two competing ideas have arisen—global cosmopolitanism and populist nationalism. Contributors argue this polarization of social ethos between cosmopolitanism and nationalism is a sign of a deeper political crisis, which they explore from different perspectives. Rather than taking sides, the aim is to diagnose the origins of the current impasse and to'bring the nation back in'by expanding what we mean by'nation'and national identity and by respecting the localizing processes that have led to national traditions and struggles.

Pour la première fois, les Européens commencèrent à douter d'eux-mêmes, à la fin de la Première Guerre mondiale. Un siècle plus tard, ils considèrent que l'Europe est désormais « sortie de l'Histoire ». Les terribles blessures que son âme a subies depuis le début du XXe siècle vont-elles la précipiter à tout jamais vers les abîmes et le néant? Seuls le courage et la volonté des Européens peuvent lui permettre de reprendre force et de redevenir le phare qu'elle a pu être au cours des siècles. Allons! Rien n'est encore perdu. C'est ce que cet ouvrage veut démontrer par-delà les peurs, les résignations et les renoncements.

In 2016, the striking electoral success of the UK Vote Leave campaign and Donald Trump's presidential bid defied conventional expectations and transformed the political landscape. Considered together, these two largely unpredicted events constitute a defining moment in the process of the incorporation of far-right populist discourse in mainstream politics. This timely book argues that there has been a change in the fundamental dynamic of the mainstreaming of far-right populist discourse. In recent elections, anti-establishment actors have rewritten the playbook, defeated the establishment and redefined political norms. They have effectively outplayed, overtaken and trumped mainstream parties and policies.As fringe discourse becomes mainstream, how we conceive of the political landscape and indeed the very distinction between a political centre and periphery has been challenged. This book provides new theoretical tools and empirical analyses to understand the ongoing mainstreaming of far-right populism. Offering case studies and comparative research, it analyses recent political events in the US, UK, France and Belgium. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of populism and far-right politics who seek to make sense of recent world-altering events.

In cultural and intellectual terms, one of the EU's most important objectives in pursuing unification has been to develop a common historical narrative of Europe. Across ten compelling case studies, this volume examines the premises underlying such a project to ask: Could such an uncontested history of Europe ever exist? Combining studies of national politics, supranational institutions, and the fraught EU-Mideast periphery with a particular focus on the twentieth century, the contributors to History and Belonging offer a fascinating survey of the attempt to forge a post-national identity politics.

This book aims to provide empirical evidence regarding the consequences of changes in European societies, focussing on migration and related phenomena of discrimination and xenophobia. The comparative analyses cover all countries of the European Social Survey in the period 2002–2014. They reveal that native members of so-called vulnerable groups, such as the unemployed, retired, permanently sick or disabled and the elderly, were more likely to experience threats and to exhibit anti-immigration attitudes. The contributors further examine social openness defined in terms of marital homogamy, social trust in the context of legitimization and social conditions of sleeplessness. A final methodological section presents the results of a mixed mode experiment involving the face-to-face mode.

Wir leben in postfaktischen Zeiten − lesen und hören wir allenthalben. Aber was heißt das eigentlich? Gilt auf einmal die harte Realität, die nüchterne Anerkennung der Tatsachen, nichts mehr, ist uns die Wahrheit schnuppe, zählt immer und überall nur noch die Meinung, das Bauchgefühl? In diesem Buch setzen Schriftsteller und Intellektuelle dem aufgeregten Zeitgeist Argumente entgegen. Vernunft und Empathie gegen Hass und Panikmache, nüchterne Analyse und ehrliche Selbsterforschung gegen Lüge und Selbstbetrug. Sie erheben die Stimme für mehr Demokratie in Deutschland und Europa - und gegen die simplen und menschenverachtenden Konzepte der rechten Populisten.

In Europe today, staunchly nationalist parties such as France's National Front and the Austrian Freedom Party are identified as far-right movements, though supporters seldom embrace that label. More often, “far right” is pejorative, used by liberals to tar these groups with the taint of Fascism, Nazism, and other discredited ideologies. Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg's critical look at the far right throughout Europe—from the United Kingdom to France, Germany, Poland, Italy, and elsewhere—reveals a prehistory and politics more complex than the stereotypes suggest and warns of the challenges these movements pose to the EU's liberal-democratic order.The European far right represents a confluence of many ideologies: nationalism, socialism, anti-Semitism, authoritarianism. In the first half of the twentieth century, the radical far right achieved its apotheosis in the regimes of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. But these movements have evolved significantly since 1945, as Far-Right Politics in Europe makes clear. The 1980s marked a turning point in political fortunes, as national-populist parties began winning seats in European parliaments. Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the United States, a new wave has unfurled, one that is explicitly anti-immigrant and Islamophobic in outlook.Though Europe's far-right parties differ in important respects, they are motivated by a common sense of mission: to save their homelands from what they view as the corrosive effects of multiculturalism and globalization by creating a closed-off, ethnically homogeneous society. Members of these movements are increasingly determined to gain power through legitimate electoral means. In democracies across Europe, they are succeeding.

On Extremism and Democracy in Europe is a collection of short and accessible essays on the far right, populism, Euroscepticism, and liberal democracy by one of the leading academic and public voices today. It includes both sober, fact-based analysis of the often sensationalized'rise of the far right'in Europe as well as passionate defence of the fundamental values of liberal democracy. Sometimes counter-intuitive and always thought-provoking, Mudde argues that the true challenge to liberal democracy comes from the political elites at the centre of the political systems rather than from the political challengers at the political margins. Pushing to go beyond the simplistic opposition of extremism and democracy, which is much clearer in theory than in practice, he accentuates the internal dangers of liberal democracy without ignoring the external threats. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in European politics, extremism and/or current affairs more generally.

Most theories of radicalization focus on the birth of antidemocratic ideas, semantics, behavior patterns and organizations. However, such focus is one-sided: radicalization is as much about the forgetting of historical lessons and the weakening of a democratic consensus, as the spreading of populist ideas. A case study of public and private processes of memory transmission in Hungary reveals how the ambiguous relation to modernization affects political formation: the failures provoke populist reactions, while the successes result in political indifference. The combination of these two political cultures creates a dangerous compound including both the opportunity for the birth of antidemocratic semantics and their ignorance. The author analyzes the potential of such «incubation of radicalism» on a European survey.

Over the past 25 years, Jürgen Habermas has presented what is arguably the most coherent and wide-ranging defence of the project of European unification and of parallel developments towards a politically integrated world society. In developing his key concepts of the transnationalisation of democracy and the constitutionalisation of international law, Habermas offers the main players in the struggles over the fate of the European Union (the politicians, the political parties and the publics of the member states) a way out of the current economic and political crisis, should they choose to follow it. In the title essay Habermas addresses the challenges and threats posed by the current banking and public debt crisis in the Eurozone for European unification. He is harshly critical of the incrementalist, technocratic policies advocated by the German government in particular, which are being imposed at the expense of the populations of the economically weaker, crisis-stricken countries and are undermining solidarity between the member states. He argues that only if the technocratic approach is replaced by a deeper democratization of the European institutions can the European Union fulfil its promise as a model for how rampant market capitalism can once again be brought under political control at the supranational level. This volume reflects the impressive scope of Habermas?s recent writings on European themes, including theoretical treatments of the complex legal and political issues at stake, interventions on current affairs, and reflections on the lives and works of major European philosophers and intellectuals. Together the essays provide eloquent testimony to the enduring relevance of the work of one of the most influential and far-sighted public intellectuals in the world today, and are essential reading for all philosophers, legal scholars and social scientists interested in European and global issues.

The present collection of articles is based on data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and analyses the changes in European societies. The first part of the volume is devoted to relations between legitimization, subjective well-being, voting patterns, and the role of social cohesion in determination of political culture. The second part addresses methodological questions designed to quantify the reliability and validity of certain measures in interviews, coverage errors, measurement errors, and non-response, as well as the understanding of questions in multi-country surveys in the context of the comparability between countries.

Les « Mots de la Liberté » s'opposent aux « Mots de la Servitude ». C'est pourquoi le titre de cet essai est un appel au travail et à la résistance mais aussi un espoir. Un peuple renonce peu à peu à sa liberté s'il n'est plus à la hauteur de ses épreuves passées cristallisées dans la richesse de sa langue. Il s'agit ici de réfléchir sur les causes possibles du conformisme dans l'usage des mots dans les « temps démocratiques », pour reprendre une formule de Tocqueville...

The Kurdish question is one of the most complicated and protracted conflicts of the Middle East and will never be resolved unless it is finally defined. The majority of the Kurdish people live in Turkey, which gives the country a unique position in the larger Kurdish conundrum. Society in Turkey is deeply divided over the definition and even existence of the Kurdish question, and this uncertainty has long manifested itself in its complete denial, or in accusations of political rivals of ‘separatism'and even ‘treason'. Turkey's Kurdish Question explores how these denial and acknowledgement dynamics often reveal pre-existing political ideology and agenda priorities, themselves becoming political actions. While the very term'Kurdish question'is discussed in the academic literature as a given, a new and systemic study is required to deconstruct and analyze the constitutive parts of this discursive construct. This book provides the first comprehensive study and analysis of the discursive constructions and perceptions of what is broadly defined as the'Kurdish question'in Turkish, European and American political cultures. Furthermore, its new methodological approach to the study of discourse and politics of secessionist conflicts can be applied to many similar intra-state conflict cases.Turkey's Kurdish Question would suit students and scholars of Middle East studies, Conflict studies and Comparative Politics, as well as Turkish or Kurdish studies.H. Akın Ünver is an assistant professor of international relations at Kadir Has University. This book is based on his dissertation ‘Defining Turkey's Kurdish Question‘, which has won the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) 2010 Malcolm H. Kerr award for the best dissertation in the field of social sciences.

Die Europäische Union sieht sich heute in der Krise mit Dilemmata und Paradoxien konfrontiert, die ihren Bestand bedrohen. Maurizio Bach beleuchtet in diesem Band die Kernprobleme der europäischen Integration aus soziologischer Perspektive. Deutlich wird, dass die gegenwärtigen Gefährdungen des europäischen Projekts in Strukturdefekten des supranationalen Verbandes selbst wurzeln. Hier müssen auch die Reformbemühungen ansetzen, wenn die Europäische Union noch eine Zukunft haben soll.

Culture is a constant reference in debates surrounding Islam in Europe. Yet the notion of culture is commonly restricted to conceptual frames of multiculturalism where it relates to group identities, collective ways of life and recognition. This volume extends such analysis of culture by approaching it as semiotic practice which conjoins the making of subjects with the configuration of the social. Examining fields such as memory, literature, film, and Islamic art, the studies in this volume explore culture as another element in the assemblage of rationalities governing European Islam. From this perspective, the transformations of European identities can be understood as a matter of cultural practice and politics, which extend the analytical frames of political philosophy, historical legacies, normative orders and social dynamics.

The further evolution of the European Union is mainly dependent on how its citizens relate to their fellow Europeans speaking a score of languages and belonging to a variety of cultures. This book addresses the question of whether a new sense of collective self-identification, labeled “European identity,” a special form of socio-territorial identities, is emerging. Collective identities are works in progress, they entail a salient strategic—activist and future-oriented—dimension. Divergent strategic goals of the constituent groups induce a perpetual contestation and negotiation of the group identity, a process that in the case of the EU is intensified by the continuously changing boundaries and institutional structure of the super-polity. To confront these challenges, this book has a double focus. The first part weighs in on the feasibility of a European identity in light of what the two main paradigms in the field, primordialism and constructivism, can predict. The second part maps the social forces that are either favorable or inimical to the creation of a common social identity on the continent. Both parts develop hypotheses about the processes we witness, and test them with the available empirical data. Part II distinguishes between passive and active supporters of the integration project, besides the Euroskeptic segment of the public. Provision of public goods by regional integration is believed to explain passive permissiveness, while the main impetus for integration comes from those who may reap above-average benefits from it. This book contends that the groups of active supporters have historically been changing within the Union; namely, the political Left and Right are changing their roles in negotiating future developments. Yet the evolution of the EU is also shaped by the solutions adopted to accommodate ethnic and cultural diversity. The empirical tests involve opinion survey data taken from the Eurobarometer series, World Value and European Social Surveys, and the International Social Survey Programme, expert ratings, as well as party elite documents from the Manifesto Project Database.

What is Europe? Who is European? What do Europe and European identity mean in the twenty-first century? This collection of sixteen essays seeks to answer these questions by focusing on Europe as it is seen through its own eyes and through the eyes of others across a variety of cultural texts, including sport, film, literature, dance, cartography, and fashion. These texts, as interpreted here by emerging researchers as well as well-established scholars, enable us to engage with European identities in the plural and to understand what these identities mean in larger cultural and political contexts. The interdisciplinary focus of this volume permits an exploration of European identity that reaches beyond the area of European studies to incorporate understandings of identity from the viewpoints of both insider and other. Contributors explore diverse understandings of what it means to be “other” to a country, a culture, a society, or a subgroup. This book offers a fresh perspective on the evolving concept of identity—in the context of Europe's past, present, and future—and expands on the existing literature by considering the political tensions and social implications of the development of European identity, as well as its literary, artistic, and cultural manifestations.

Wie wird Europa im Jahr 2030 aussehen? Wie wird sich die Arbeit entwickeln? Wie die Bildung? Welche Familienformen wird es geben? Wird die Spaltung der Gesellschaft in Arm und Reich weiter fortschreiten? Auf diese und andere Fragen antworten 20 Zukunftsforscher aus ganz Europa. Basis der Untersuchung sind Repräsentativbefragungen von über 11 000 Bürgern in Deutschland, England, Russland, Österreich, Italien, Frankreich, Spanien, Finnland und der Schweiz. Die Ergebnisse bieten vielfach überraschende Einblicke in die Zukunftserwartungen der Europäer. Während beispielsweise viele Deutsche für über 60-Jährige Wohngemeinschaften als Lebensform der Zukunft annehmen, können sich damit nur wenige Russen identifizieren. Eine Veränderung in der Partnerfindung sehen insbesondere die Franzosen: Sie glauben, dass 2030 bereits jede dritte Partnerschaft über Internet-Dating-Netzwerke entstehen wird. Auf Frauenpower setzen die Schweizer: Sehr viel mehr Frauen werden ihrer Meinung nach künftig Führungspositionen besetzen.

Es gibt noch kein republikanisches Europa, und eine'Republik Europa'steht auch in Zukunft nicht zu erwarten. Aber die Entfaltung republikanischer Elemente in der Europäischen Union ist notwendig, um ihren anhaltenden Demokratiedefiziten abzuhelfen. Das Buch legt die normative Elle einer zeitgemäßen Theorie des Republikanismus an die gegenwärtigen Verlaufsformen der europäischen Integration und zeigt damit in einer neuartigen Pointierung die demokratischen Defizite der europäischen Einigung auf - den eklatanten Mangel an europäischem Republikanismus. Es setzt sich aber auch mit den vorhandenen Ansatzpunkten und Entfaltungsmöglichkeiten einer partizipatorischen Demokratie in der Europäischen Union auseinander und entwickelt auf der Basis des republikanischen Modells konkrete Handlungsanleitungen, die zu einer größeren Entfaltung von Demokratie erforderlich sind - im Sinne einer nachholenden Zivilisierung Europas.

Innerhalb der Politikwissenschaft hat der Begriff politische Kultur seit 1990 einen immensen Aufschwung erfahren. In dieser Arbeit stehen Fragen nach der Angleichung der Differenzen zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland im Mittelpunkt des Interesses. Die gegensätzlichen Bewertungen von Ausmaß und Dauerhaftigkeit der Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Landesteilen zeigen, dass in dieser Debatte Vergleichsmaßstäbe fehlen. Dementsprechend werden regionale politische Kulturen in Deutschland aus ihrer isolierten Betrachtung gelöst und empirisch in einen europäischen Vergleichsrahmen eingeordnet. Insgesamt lassen die Ergebnisse den Schluss zu, dass die Differenzen zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschland in Europa zwar keine singuläre, aber doch eine besondere Stellung einnehmen.

Cet ouvrage compare l'extrême droite française, hongroise, italienne et roumaine pour comprendre les processus qui ont mené ces partis dans un espace politique très médiatisé, leur assurant un certain succès électoral, la possibilité de séduire une partie de la population et d'attirer de nouveaux militants. Il rend compte des motivations psychosociologiques de l'adhésion et du processus de confrontation entre une histoire privée, individuelle, et l'histoire sociale et politique du pays.

Islam and Political-Cultural Europe identifies the sometimes confusing and often contentious new challenges that arise in daily life and institutions as Islam settles deeper into Europe. Critiquing past and recent assimilation efforts in the fields of education, finance, and security, the contributors offer prospective solutions to diverse contemporary problems. Exploring the interactions of Muslim, Christian and secular cultures in the context of highly pluralized contemporary European societies, this book offers a valuable tool for those within and outside Europe seeking to understand the far-reaching implications of combining cultures, the struggles of the Muslim-Christian-secular transition, and the progress which the future promises.

This book provides an in-depth discussion and analysis of democracy in Europe, with a focus on the new EU member states, and makes an important and original contribution to the debate on the future of European democracy. Author Paul Blokker seeks to provide a critical reconceptualization of the notion of democratic political culture by developing a ‘multiple democracies'theoretical approach. He draws on debates in democratization theory and normative political theory, and presents a cultural-sociological approach for the analysis of democratization and democratic regimes. This approach emphasizes the historical and cultural embedment of democracy, identifies a potential variety of ‘ethics of democracy'that underpin democratic political cultures, and points to the significance of democratic imagination in the interpretation and recombination of such ethics.The book explores the relevance of this approach by analysing multiple political cultures and their role in the emergence of democratic regimes in three new member states - Hungary, Poland, and Romania - providing a detailed description and analysis of political cultures by means of the analysis of constitutional politics, constitutional texts, and political elite discourses, and the identification of distinct politico-cultural elements that distinguish these societies from each other.It will be of interest to students and scholars of democracy, European studies, post-communist studies, political theory and comparative politics.

Russian-European political relations have always been problematic and one of the main reasons for this is the different perspectives on even the very basic notions and concepts of political life. With a worldwide recession, the problems as well as the opportunities in Russian-European relations are magnified. While most works on Russian-European, Russian-American and Russian-West relations focus on current policies and explain them from a standard set of explanatory variables, this book penetrates deeper into the structural and ideational differences that tend to bring about misperceptions, miscalculations, misinterpretations and misdeeds in this two-directional relationship. It applies a very broad conceptual framework to analyse differences that are as relevant for Europe and the EU as it is to Russia's immediate neighbours and, while doing so, identifies the key factors that will dominate Russia-EU ties in the next decade.

Throughout the world, governments are restructuring social and welfare provision to give a stronger role to opportunity, aspiration and individual responsibility, and to competition, markets and consumer choice. This approach centres on a logic of individual rational action: people are the best judges of what serves their own interests and government should give them as much freedom of choice as possible. The UK has gone further than any other major European country in reform and provides a useful object lesson. This book analyses the pressures on social citizenship from changes in work and the family, political actors, population ageing, and the processes within government in the relentless international process of globalization that have shaped the response. It examines the various social science approaches to agency and argues that the logic of rational action is able to explain how reciprocity arises and is sustained but offers a weak foundation for social inclusion and social trust. It will only sustain part of the welfare state. A detailed assessment of empirical evidence shows how the outcomes of the new policy framework correspond to its theoretical strengths and limitations. Reforms have achieved considerable success in delivering mass services efficiently. They are much less successful in redistributing to more vulnerable low income groups and in maintaining public trust in the structure of provision. The risk is that mistrustful and disquieted voters may be unwilling to support high spending on health care, pensions and other benefits at a time when they are most needed. In short, the reform programme was undertaken for excellent reasons in a difficult international context, but risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Many thought the 21st century would witness political, economic and even ideological convergence amongst the countries of the West. This has not happened. Today we see America'growing apart'from her democratic allies and neighbors. Growing Apart shows how the social, political, and economic forces shaping advanced democratic states are pushing America in different directions from the rest of the democratic world and argues that these changes are not the product of any particular president or government. This volume brings together a set of leading scholars who each examine the evolution of different social, political, and economic forces shaping Europe and America. It is the first book to unite the international relations scholarship on transatlantic relations with the comparative politics literature on the varieties of capitalism. Taken together, the essays in this volume address whether the'West'will continue to remain a coherent entity in the 21st century.

This book is a study of the attitudes to political and social life among the citizens of eighteen countries in Western Europe, East and Southeast Asia. Drawing on data from the largest cross-national survey on political culture for the last half a century, this book assesses how political culture differs across the two regions and whether this can be drawn back to a profound difference in basic societal values, or ‘Asian values'. Examining geographical, religious and socio-economic factors, the authors discuss whether there genuinely is a common political value in the two regions or a profound difference as these countries move towards modernity.This original and comprehensive study of the values, norms and beliefs held by citizens of the East and West will appeal to students and scholars of political culture and comparative politics, as well as Asian and European politics.

The European Union and European identity were until recently the objects of separate branches of scholarship and inquiry. With the entry of Central and Eastern European members into the EU, it has become clear that the future of the European Union can no longer be considered in isolation from the future of European identity. Taking Jürgen Habermas's plea for a European constitution and a normative foundation for the European Union as its starting point, this volume brings together the ideas of distinguished scholars in philosophy, political science, sociology, history, law and theology in order to address the shifting relationship between constitutionality, political culture, history and collective identity. The book argues that the future shape of Europe will not only result from external processes of globalisation but from the interaction between these social spheres within Europe.

At a time when so many cracks have emerged within the imagined community of ‘the West', this important new book, by one of the leading social scientists in Europe, examines the intellectual history of comparing Europe and the United States. Claus Offe considers the perspectives adopted by three of Europe's greatest social scientists – Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber and Theodor W. Adorno – in their comparative writings on Europe. While traveling, studying and working in the US, all three constantly looked back to their European origins, trying to decipher from their American experience what the future may hold for Europe, be it for better or worse. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French aristocrat, observed the functioning of American democracy with a mix of admiration, envy and deep concerns about the fate of liberty in the ‘democratic age'. Max Weber, the German sociologist, reported enthusiastically about the youthful energy he found in the United States, which, however, he saw as gradually succumbing to the stifling tendencies of European bureaucratization. Theodor W. Adorno, the critical theorist and refugee from Nazi Germany, observed with a sense of despair the workings of the American ‘culture industry'which he equated to the totalitarian experience of Europe, only to switch to a much more favorable picture upon his return to Germany. Europe and the US are conventionally assumed to share the same trajectory and develop according to some common pattern of ‘occidental rationalism', with the observed differences resulting from mere lags and relative advances on one side or the other. In this insightful book, Offe questions the relevance of this paradigm to transatlantic relations today.

New Europe: Imagined Spaces traces the radical transformation of European places and spaces over the last two decades. Instead of the familiar'schoolbook'map of a Europe of nation-states, the book unpacks the differing imaginations of European identity in recent years. Taking as its central problem the fluid nature of cultural and political identity, it moves firmly away from - and calls into question - the perspective of the nation-state as the primary source of imagined identity for Europeans.The book contributes to key debates, such as the emerging Europe of the Regions and the return of the city-state, examines the'rebranding'of the nation-state and explores the impact of'Europeanisation'on existing place identity. Emphasising mobility and movement, the chapters explore borderlands and travel, and also include a detailed discussion of the'everyday life'of Europeans. Throughout, iconic images of contemporary Europe are invoked: Eurodisney, the Reichstag, Barcelona's Ramblas and the Bilbao Guggenheim, and the way in which mundane artefacts and practices such as football, walking, cars, food, passports and the Euro help construct identity is considered. New Europe: Imagined Spaces adopts a multidisciplinary approach to studying Europe, providing students with an exploration of contemporary European space and place identity.

The creation of the European Union and the progressive integration of the European states has raised serious questions about the existence of a distinctive European identity. Do the British share much in common with the French, or the French with the Danes? Will a unified Europe remain an economic and political possibility with no greater cultural or affective foundations? If there is something that distinguishes all Europeans, what is it, and how is it being changed by recent events? This book addresses these questions in essays ranging from ancient Greece to the end of the twentieth century. Their authors come from different intellectual backgrounds and represent differing intellectual traditions. They discuss questions of politics, religion, commerce, law, language, literature and affectivity. Taken together, they provide a powerful insight into the historical origins of the idea of Europe and into the future of the European Union.

How has memory - collective and individual - influenced European politics after the Second World War and after 1989 in particular? How has the past been used in domestic struggles for power, and how have'historical lessons'been applied in foreign policy? While there is now a burgeoning field of social and cultural memory studies, mostly focused on commemorations and monuments, this volume is the first to examine the connection between memory and politics directly. It investigates how memory is officially recast, personally reworked and often violently re-instilled after wars, and, above all, the ways memory shapes present power constellations. The chapters combine theoretical innovation in their approach to the study of memory with deeply historical, empirically based case studies of major European countries. The volume concludes with reflections on the ethics of memory, and the politics of truth, justice and forgetting after 1945 and 1989.

The authors explore the creation of a European identity through the EU's interaction with the external environment vis-à-vis socioeconomic issues, foreign and security policy, and home affairs.

This comparative study of the political cultures of the major european nations, explores the notion of nationhood as it applies in different political contexts.